Are you reading an urban legend email?

If you are like me you receive several emails each day. Some from work, some from family and friends. And a lot of the emails have been forwarded and forwarded and forwarded before they get to you. Some are funny pictures or funny jokes, but some sound like they are telling helpful story. How can you tell if you are getting a helpful hint or being duped into forwarding an urban legend? Well, after reading the forwarded email check out one of theses sites. * http://www.snopes.com/ * http://urbanlegends.about.com/ * http://www.scambusters.org/legends.html * http://www.factcheck.org/ * http://www.breakthechain.org/ ::update:: Since making this post I have found two more sites dedicated to pointing out urban legend emails. If you know of any more site like these sites leave the URL in the comments section or email me at sanman294atgmaildotcom. And I will post them here and give you credit for finding them for me! http://www.truthorfiction.com/ http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/

Stimulate a growing mind.

Do you have a child? Are they wanting to use your computer? Here is a site that just might help you and your child learn something about computers. It called Bitman's Place! The goal is to teach the next generation of programmers the fundamentals of computer science while tapping their natural curiosity and attraction to technology. We do so through a series of fun, interactive, step by step lessons delivered online that can be done individually or together with parents or teachers.* *excerpt from Jeff Sandquist.com creator of Bitman's Place

Is your website valid?

I was trying to improve my site recently, after reading a post at Scribbling.net called "Nine things you can do to make your web site better." That lead me to wondering if the html code to my site was valid. First off when a web browser looks at your website the first line it reads tells it what to do with all other lines of html it reads. In that first line you will find ...w3.org... And this got me wondering what happens when search for that web address myself? Well, w3.org leads you to the "World Wide Web Consortium." The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential.* This is were I found a link to their validator. Boy was I in for a surprise! After entering my URL into the validator it came back with over 200 errors! I have since corrected all errors and can gladly say that this site is W3C approved and VALID! Why is this important? In order for any website to function like the web designer intended, the html code must contain no errors. If there is even one error, web browser "A" will show the site one way and web browser "B" will show it differently. Which can be frustrating for visitors to your site. For example, links not working, text not showing up properly(seeing only the top/bottom half of any text), text smashed together and not readable and the list goes on. So if you have a website you might want to run it past the validator and make sure your visitors can read your site no matter what web browser they are using. If you have any questions about your findings leave a comment with your URL and email address and maybe I can help you fix your site. *excerpt for the W3C site.